Main Book Room Sale
In our Main Room, prices are way below what used book stores charge. Paperbacks are 50 cents and up, and
hardcovers are $1 and up. Numbered tickets for the Main Room are given out
beginning at 8 am on Saturday. These reserve your place in the line that
forms before the 11 am opening. You may pick up a ticket for yourself and
for one other person.

Children's Books in K6
Room K6 in the K wing (see
map) is
entirely filled with children's books and toys. You'll find picture books,
school age fiction, award winners, non-English titles, and books for parents and
teachers, many for under $1. This room and the Bargain Room open at 10 am
on Saturday.

Bargain Books in K7
Next door in K7 is the Bargain Room, where paperbacks
are 50 cents, hardcovers are $1, and children's books are just 25 cents each.
The room also contains many LP records and 78s at $1 each. All items are
half off after 12:30 pm on Saturday and all day on Sunday. On Sunday, you
can also buy grocery bags in the Bargain Room for $5 and fill them with books.

The Palo Alto Library's summer reading program begins in early
June. Kids of all ages can participate and attend events and parties.
Once you achieve your reading goal, you receive a free book and other awards,
and may be eligible for grand prizes. See more information for
kids through
5th grade and
teens.
The summer reading program is sponsored by the Friends of the Palo Alto Library.

Non-Profit Book Giveaway

Non-profit organizations and schools that need free books should come to the
Bargain Room this month from 4 to 6 pm on Sunday, May 11.
Please bring grocery bags to put books into.
More information.

Suggestions?

We're always eager to hear your suggestions for ways to
improve our book sale. Please email them to us at suggestions@friendspaloaltolib.org
or mention them to a volunteer at the sale.

"Sea and Key" Donations

We've received an enormous number of oceanography books, covering topics
such as scuba diving, marine life,
undersea exploration, treasure ships, Jacques Cousteau, and the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography - namely, everything about the sea. Look for
these books at this weekend's sale in the Main Room on a special table and in the Nature section.

We
also received a Wurlitzer Strad player piano with bench and approximately 130 piano rolls,
which we are offering for $650, along with a complementary copy of Larry Givens'
classic book Rebuilding the Player Piano. Please see Althea Andersen outside the Main Room
during the sale to make an appointment to view these items if you are interested.

Ed. note: please do not send in complaints regarding the lame headline for this article.
To our credit, we rejected "Boats and Notes", "Shoals and Rolls," "Sea Miner and
C Minor," "Shads and Strads," "String Rays," and others best not made public.

Preview our Shelves

Be
sure to enjoy a leisurely virtual stroll through our sale with our
shelf preview
pictures. Taken in just the last few days from many sections of our Main Room,
the pictures show you a number of the interesting books available at this
weekend's sale.

Palo Alto Libraries Lead the Pack

According to recently-released
statistics
from the California State Library, Palo Alto's libraries were first in per
capita circulation and second in visits among similar-sized cities during
2006-2007. Each Palo Altan checked out on average 23
items during that 12-month period, more than residents in any other California
city of 50,000 to 70,000 population. In fact, Palo Alto's per capita
circulation topped that of Mountain View, Menlo Park, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale,
and almost all others localities in the state.

Palo Alto achieves
its high usage despite a smaller collection than many other libraries. We
rank just #32 out of 179 California cities and counties in total materials per
capita and #37 for books. Fourteen other library systems spent more than
Palo Alto's $96.28 per resident, including Burlingame, Berkeley, and tiny
Carmel, which topped the list at $325.87.

Join and Save

Joining the Friends of the Palo Alto Library makes you eligible to bank
at the Stanford Federal Credit Union - "Where the Stanford Community Banks!" For
more details, visit
www.sfcu.org. You also receive a 10% discount on purchases at
Books Inc.'s
brand-new store in Town and Country Village and early admittance at
our annual Members-Early sale. Join
online, at the
booksale, or at any Palo Alto library.

Free May 14 Class on Genealogy Resources

There's still time to sign up for the May 14 class on how to use
the library's many genealogy resources. The class will
be held from 10:30 am to noon at the Main Library, 1213 Newell Road and you can
reserve a spot
online.

Library Bond Meeting on May 10

A third community meeting on a proposed $80 million package of changes to Palo Alto's libraries and a community center takes place this
Saturday from 10 to 11:30 am at the Mitchell Park Community Center at 3700
Middlefield Road.
Several dozen residents attended two earlier meetings in late April at which
city officials, Library Director Diane Jennings, and representatives from the
architectural firm Group 4 explained their plan to replace the Mitchell Park
library and adjacent community center and upgrade the Main and Downtown
buildings.

Attendees at the April meetings asked many questions about the proposal.
In response to queries about cost and schedule, project personnel explained that
they hope to minimize inconvenience by closing just one facility at a time, but
also to rebuild at Mitchell Park quickly to avoid construction cost inflation.
Because the Mitchell Park project is complex, they anticipate improving
the Downtown Library first, which is a much smaller effort and might begin by
the end of 2009. During that period, a modular building could house
the downtown technical services staff. The city would raze the Mitchell
Park buildings next and build the new 51,000 square foot combined facility with the modular building nearby (possibly at the Cubberley Community Center) providing
interim library services to the public. Once the Mitchell
Park project is completed, the modular building would relocate to serve as a
temporary facility for the remodeling of the Main Library. The
smaller size of the modular might allow the city to reassign personnel from Main during this
final stage and delay hiring the extra staff that the Mitchell Park library
will eventually require. By 2013 or 2014, the entire project would be
completed.

To address cost concerns, the city has sought input from local construction
experts and expects to hear their report at a City Council meeting rescheduled for May
19 at 7 pm at City Hall, 250 Hamilton Avenue. The city also plans to mail two to four
informational pieces to residents and poll to assess support for the bond
measure, with the results to be discussed at the June 23 City Council meeting.
See recent articles in the
Palo Alto
Weekly and
Palo Alto Daily News, the city's
project website, and our quick views of the
proposed designs.

Book Group Chooses Next Year of Reading

Here's what the Friends of the Palo Alto Library book group will be reading over the coming year. The group
meets from 7:30 to 9 pm on the second Thursday of every month at the Lucie Stern
Community Center Fireside Room at 1305 Middlefield Road. Click on any
title to learn more it:

This notice comes to you from the non-profit organization
Friends of the Palo Alto Library. No trees were felled in the making of
this e-mail. While the Better Business Bureau recommends that no more
than 35% of a charitable organization's expenses be for management and
fundraising expenses, ours were under 1% for our 2006-2007 fiscal year. In other words,
over 99% of the
money we raised went to help Palo Alto Library users. Visit our web
site. Become a member
by joining online.

Be sure to receive your own free copy of this e-mail notice so that you'll know
about all special upcoming books sales. To sign up, just e-mail
us. We carefully protect the privacy of your e-mail address. We
will not share your e-mail address with any other organization and we will not
use it for any purpose other than to send you these notices. If you do not
wish to receive these e-mail notices in the future, please
reply with the words "Remove Me" in the subject line.